Pioneer to Help Fishers

Pioneer to Help Fishers

Article excerpt

MORE than three million recreational fishers in Australia should be hoping that Craig Copeland's $20,000 mission to the Northern Hemisphere next year is highly successful.

Mr Copeland, the manager of the Conservation Action Unit within the Department of Primary Industries based at Wollongbar, has been awarded a prestigious $20,000 Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship to travel to the US, UK and Ireland.

He will be researching why so many overseas recreational fishers are the principal players in restoring fish habitat while many of their Australian counterparts still failed to make the link between habitat health and fish stock numbers.

aThere is great scope to significantly increase the proportion of recreational fishers in NSW who contribute time, funding and effort to re-habilitate fish habitat and, as a result, increase fish populations,a the 50-year-old said.

Mr Copeland said 300ha in mangrove fish habitat had been lost from the Richmond River alone since the 1960s which represented around $13,000 worth of fish a year per hectare. …